AuthorTopic: [Solved] Firefox, Mplayer (Read 9480 times)

Well, after setting up a couple units with Vista and reading about why it turned those nice machines to dirt , my mind is made up to switch to Linux. After messing around with lot's of distros, I settled on Vector because of it's speed, out of the box features, and Slackware's reputation for stability. I settled some initial issues with Lilo and Grub (I'm running a triple boot - 98/xp/vector - until I can do everything I need in vector), and I'm mostly very pleased. I have 1 MAJOR problem and a couple minors ones that I'd like help with, though. BTW, I'm using Soho 5.8 final.

1) Firefox is causing system crashes. This is the MAJOR. I use Firefox on all 3 os's and have it configured as true cross platform (Thunderbird, too) - ie. all installations of Firefox use the same profiles folder, which is on a fat32 partition. As a matter of fact, I'm writing this from 98 because signing up for this forum caused a system crash (could move the mouse pointer, but nothing else worked). Thunderbird seems to have no problems with this arrangement.

2) I can't get Mplayer or Xine to play DVD's. I can play them with VLC, but only after I direct it to the proper mount (?) point. Is there a configuration file I need to edit manually to direct the other apps to the right directory?

3) This is off topic, but does anyone know how to make Kbarcode save images as tiffs?

1) Firefox is causing system crashes. This is the MAJOR. I use Firefox on all 3 os's and have it configured as true cross platform (Thunderbird, too) - ie. all installations of Firefox use the same profiles folder, which is on a fat32 partition. As a matter of fact, I'm writing this from 98 because signing up for this forum caused a system crash (could move the mouse pointer, but nothing else worked). Thunderbird seems to have no problems with this arrangement.

iirc this has been a problem.

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2) I can't get Mplayer or Xine to play DVD's. I can play them with VLC, but only after I direct it to the proper mount (?) point. Is there a configuration file I need to edit manually to direct the other apps to the right directory?

Usually a codec issue for DVD. Check where VLC has the codecs, then point xine and mplayer to the codecs. To do that you can check http://xinehq.de/ and www.mplayerhq.hu

I think that is a stand for "if I remember correctly" (dont feel bad, I am a spanish speaker and I cant understand those things, I used google to find out )You could set the profile of your VL Firefox in a linux partition, just to see if the fat32 profile is the cause of the crash.

« Last Edit: June 05, 2007, 05:28:34 pm by rbistolfi »

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"There is a concept which corrupts and upsets all others. I refer not to Evil, whose limited realm is that of ethics; I refer to the infinite."Jorge Luis Borges, Avatars of the Tortoise. --Jumalauta!!

Thanks for the advice, ribistolfi. I didn't change the profile, but I did import bookmarks from Firefox to Seamonkey. In Seamonkey, the first place I went was a problematic (and crucial) site, Statcounter.com. Bingo, system crash as soon as I tried to access my site stats. A problem with the Gecko engine, perhaps? I don't know of any way to get Vector going again when this happens, other than a hard shutdown.

This is a serious problem, folks. Firefox is very stable on 98 and XP - Linux is supposed to be better. I need excellent cross platform compatability in order to migrate to Linux, because I still need to use Windows a LOT until I can manage my business through VL. If I can't surf the web, I can't use Linux, and I'll be forced (eventually) to swallow the crap MS has foisted upon us with Vista. You Linux folks have a golden opportunity here with Vista, but the window is small. I don't like Ubuntu (or Kubuntu), and PCLOS is too bloated for my taste. Also, I dont have endless time to screw around and don't know Linux well enough (yet) to do it, although I'm pretty good with a computer.

Are you running the current version of Firefox for VL (2.0.0.3) or the one from the iso (2.0)? If the latter I suggest you try upgrading. Make sure the patches repository is enabled in your /etc/slapt-get/slapt-getrc file. If you're using gslapt (graphical package manager) click on the Update icon. That will refresh your list of available packages. You should then see the newer version of Firefox and can check the box to upgrade. I don't run Windows at all but I did go statcounter.com and there was no crash. BTW, the same applies to Seamonkey. It, too, may need to be upgraded. Firefox 2.0.0.3 has been rock stable for me under Vector Linux (and also Xubuntu and Mandriva).

BTW, if you'd like you can upgrade all the packages for which upgrades have been issued in the seven months since VL 5.8 was released. At the command line, as root, you run the following two commands:

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slapt-get updateslapt-get upgrade

That will upgrade everything and break (almost) nothing. I know the docs say not to do this but that is a hold over from VL 5.1 and needs to be changed. It's worked perfectly for seven months. The one exception right now is wifi-radar 1.9.6. A newly built package of wifi-radar 1.98 designed to work with the upgraded gtk+2 library you'll get with the upgrade is in the testing repository at the moment. Grab that and then the upgrade really will have broken nothing. BTW, the wifi-radar issue is the first repository issue I've seen -- far better than Fedora does with their repositories.

Please also remember that Linus Torvalds' once compared changing operating systems to "performing brain surgery on yourself". Give yourself time to adjust to the learning curve and don't assume that a problem you are having (i.e.: with Firefox) is a Linux problem. It may very well be a trying to get Linux Firefox and Windows Firefox working off the same profiles problem but that isn't a Linux issue per se.

... In Seamonkey, the first place I went was a problematic (and crucial) site, Statcounter.com. Bingo, system crash as soon as I tried to access my site stats. A problem with the Gecko engine, perhaps?

I can access my Statcounter stats page no problem here with either SeaMonkey, Firefox or Opera (VL 5.8 SOHO). I don't think this is a VL or Seamonkey issue - something must be wrong with your install or setup of your browsers.

As for your Firefox problem there is some incompatibility with you using the profile from the fat32 partition. Why don't you 1) close Firefox, 2) delete your ~/.mozilla directory (go into a terminal and type "rm -r .mozilla"), 3) reload Firefox and see if that solves the crashes. If it does it is definetely a problem with using that fat32 profile. Get back to us then and we can determine a way to get you bookmarks for you....

The fact that your browsers are crashing is highly unusual, no others have reported such effects, so I suspect something serious and you might have to do a re-install, but try my suggestion above first.

Also, you do not have to do a hard shutdown when one application hangs - instead just type CTRL-ALT-ESC, that launches xkill which turns your mouse into a skull and crossbones and you then click the top part of the offending window and it will kill that process.

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"As people become more intelligent they care less for preachers and more for teachers". Robert G. Ingersoll

I avoid multibooting issues by having a box of hard drives on hand, each with its own operating system, plus you can usually have at least two hard drives physically installed in the computer. Connect them one at a time. No problem as long as you remember to power everything off to connect a different drive, that is, disconnect the computer's power plug and wait 30 seonds before changing drives. And don't forget to label the hard drive as to operating system and computer.

I can navigate those sites from here too. I think we need to get more info. You could try a non-gecko browser to see what happens. Lynx from the console, or dillo. We need to isolate the cause of the problem. Check your syslogs too, may be there is a clue there.This is not a frequent issue, as lagagnon said, something weird is happening, I am sure you can fix it with some patience.You can try CTL+ALT+BACKSPACE to reset the x system if the way lagagnon suggested didnt work (may be the entirely x server is crashing).

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"There is a concept which corrupts and upsets all others. I refer not to Evil, whose limited realm is that of ethics; I refer to the infinite."Jorge Luis Borges, Avatars of the Tortoise. --Jumalauta!!

I agree with lagagnon and rbistolfi. This isn't something that other people are seeing and I don't believe it's a Firefox or gecko or VL problem.

I do NOT believe you need separate hard drives for each OS. What a pain, especially on a laptop. The laptop I am using now is quad boot (two instances of Vector, Xubuntu, and Mandriva One) and is humming along just fine.

While Firefox crashing may not be common in VL, it's probably a more common problem across other distros. Recently installed PCLOS 2007 and after updating Firefox via Synaptic, I had the same crashes - actually crashed the system. (Had the same problem with PCLOS .93.) No problem with Konqueror. I wonder is the problem lies elsewhere i.e hardware or

No joy so far. Cait, my version was 2.003, the latest version, although I believe 2.004 is out now. I haven't been able to find it in any repositories yet. And, no, removable hard drives don't do it for me, either - I need to see the data on my other partitions. Thanks for the tip to launch xkill, lagagnon, but these are SYSTEM crashes - the only thing I can do when they happen is move the mouse pointer around.

Here's what I've tried so far:

1) Used Gslapt to look for updates. Sorry, Cait, I didn't go command line, I'm not that adventurous yet. Found one that was supposed to be an updated java script engine. Thought that might have a shot, so I installed it. No dice.

2) Used laganon's command to re-set the default Firefox directory. Crash on Statcounter when I accessed my stats.

3) Tried Konqueror. Hmm, that seems to work OK. By the way, is it just me or does anyone else have to hold a click on the bookmarks button until you navigate to a page? A single click launches the bookmark manager, not the expected drop down.

I was looking some info about this, the only precedent I found was related with the flash plugin, you may want to give it a try. I guess you can try to reinstall the flash player. But you could upgrade ff first, because is more easy. You can upgrade Firefox from the help menu, I think there is a "find updates" option (I am using the spanish version, may be those are not the exact words).Looks like this is a very weird bug, there is no much info in google.

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"There is a concept which corrupts and upsets all others. I refer not to Evil, whose limited realm is that of ethics; I refer to the infinite."Jorge Luis Borges, Avatars of the Tortoise. --Jumalauta!!